Shag Harbour UFO Incident
The RCMP logged it, the navy searched for it, and the paperwork is still held at Library and Archives Canada under Department of National Defence file 3800-10-1. On the night of October 4, 1967, several people reported lights going into the water off Shag Harbour. Nothing was recovered.
Field Guide Entry
The night
Just after 11pm on October 4, 1967, people on the shore and in cars around Shag Harbour reported a low object with lights crossing the village and going into the water a short way offshore. RCMP officers were among those who saw something on the surface afterward.
It was handled as a possible aircraft crash. Local fishing boats went out, a Canadian Coast Guard cutter joined them, and the crews reported foam and a yellowish patch on the water. No aircraft was reported missing anywhere.
The file
This is the part that makes the case unusual. The Department of National Defence and RCMP records survive at Library and Archives Canada, in the region of 25 pages, filed under RG 24, accession 83-84/167, box 7523, file 3800-10-1. They contain RCMP logs, telexes between Ottawa and Halifax, and operational reports.
Navy divers searched the bottom in the days that followed. They reported finding nothing, and the file closed without an explanation being entered.
What it is and is not
Nothing here demonstrates a craft. What it demonstrates is that a report was taken seriously by the agencies that take aircraft crashes seriously, that they looked, and that the record of them looking was kept. Most cases of this kind leave nothing at all.
The village
Shag Harbour is a working fishing community on the southwestern shore. The Incident Society runs a small interpretive center and an annual festival, and the water where it was reported looks like the rest of the water.
Visiting Information
The Shag Harbour Incident Interpretive Centre sits on Trunk 3 in the village and runs a summer season, roughly mid-June to the end of September, with a small admission. Outside those months there is nothing staffed to see.
The collection is documents, press coverage, and film rather than physical evidence, and it takes about 30 minutes.
The reported entry point is offshore and nothing is marked on the water. The village, the shoreline, and the Incident Society's collection are what there is on land.
The society also runs an annual UFO festival, which is when the village is at its busiest and when accommodation nearby is hardest to find.
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